Now that its December I decided that I would post an article I wrote for my blogspot The Secret Place, back in December 2010. It concerns the controversy over the word XMas that offends so many. I became curious and researched. The following is an article concerning what I found: Taking the X out of Christmas Like many of you, I have been disturbed by the secularization of Christmas. It gets worse every year; although I must admit that I have done my part to contribute to obscuring just why we celebrate Christmas within my own family. Of this I am heartily ashamed and, in my recent (and more mature) years, have tried to correct this during our celebration of Christs birth. All this brings me to my recent curiosity concerning the annual hue-and-cry of my fellow Followers-of-Christ concerning the many wishes of Merry Xmas seen in the public place via cards, emails, Face Book, magazines, advertisements, etc. Like many of my fellows, I said that we should put the X out and put Christ back in. I ran across this again today and began to wonder about just what that X is and how it came to be substituted for Christ in our wishes to each other. I was quite surprised by what I found. I think you may be as well: It turns out that the X has been used since the Prophet Ezekiels time, which is over five hundred years before Jesus birth. Back then the “X” was a mark that means righteousness. The Hebrew word for this mark was Tao. In Ezekiel 9:3-4, scripture states: “And the Lord said to him [Ezekiel], go through the midst of the city, through the centre of Jerusalem, and set a ‘Tao’ on the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry because of the abominations that are done in the heart of the city.” Another interesting fact is that the “Tao,” or X, is also known as the “Taw” is the last letter of both the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets. If youll recall in tje book of Revelation (22:13), Jesus says: “I am the ‘Alpha’ and the ‘Omega’,” i.e., I am the beginning and the end, since “Alpha” and “Omega” are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. But Jesus spoke in Hebrew and Aramaic, not Greek. He would have actually said: “I am the ‘Aleph’ and the ‘Tao.’” X is what the Tao looks like when written. (1) Another source says that Christian symbols have a long history within the Body of Christ. Most are aware of the symbol of the fish used by the early Christians in order to recognize each other. The Early Christians used other symbols as well. The letters of the word Christ as it is written in Greek (the language of the New Testament) were used as symbols for the word, Christ (CRISTOS). As seen above, the first letter of the Greek word for Christ is X. Some say that it was used symbolically by the Church (to mean Christ) as early as the first century. However, Xmas was definitely in wide use to symbolically mean the word Christmas by the end of the fifteenth century.(2) In 1436 the printing press came into use with moveable type. The process was very tedious and abbreviations came into wide use. It was also costly, so the Church began to use X for the word Christ to cut down on their costs of religious books and pamphlets. Remember! X was the first letter in the original New Testament word for Christ. So that would be the same as abbreviating my name (Mary) to M, instead of my full name. It was understood by the reader as Christ. From there it spread into general use in newspapers and publications. Xmas became the accepted way of printing Christmas as did Xian for Christian and Xianity for Christianity.So...as you can see there is no plot by the secular media nor secular businesses to X Christ out of Christmas. It is simply that we have all forgotten (or, more likely, never knew) our own church history. The X is thoroughly rooted in the heritage of the church. It is simply another way to say Christmas, just as Mr. means Mister and etc. means et cetera. So, do I believe now that we (or better yet, I) should put Christ back in my familys Christmas? Absolutely. Will I continue to be upset when I am wished a Merry XMas on a card? Absolutely not. I shall try to place my focus where it belongs. When I see the X I will think of the Cross of Christ on which my LORD and Savior sacrificed Himself so that I could live eternally with Him. After all, that is why I celebrate His birth. May God bless you. Merry XMAS and a Happy New Year! Mary Ann Ray NOTE: Ever wonder how they came up with the fish as a symbol to recognize each other? I always thought that it was because they were fishers of men. WRONG! (Although that may have been behind the whole Idea. Who knows?) Those earlier believers used the first letter of several titles of Jesus: Jesus, Christ, Son of God, Savior). They took those first letters, strung together and it spelled the Greek word for fish (icquV, ichthus). Clever, huh?
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 17:41:31 +0000
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